Auction scheduled for Beninati’s Sutton Place site

Bauhouse Group head Joseph Beninati’s distressed Sutton Place development site is scheduled to hit the auction block in December.

Beninati, who had planned to build a 1,000-foot-tall luxury condo tower at 3 Sutton Place, threw the project into bankruptcy earlier this year after defaulting on a high-interest loan to lender N. Richard Kalikow.

In September, a judge approved a sale in order to pay back the loan and other creditors. Bids for the site are now due by Dec. 8 with the auction scheduled for Dec. 13, but the parties have the option to delay the proceedings for a week, Crain’s New York reported.

The tower’s proposed height had caused an uproar from nearby residents who claimed it would be out of context with the surrounding neighborhood. In January, a neighborhood group filed an application with the city that would set a height limit in the area of 260 feet, which just so happened to be a hair below the height of a condo owned by one of the group’s leaders.

The proposal is supported by a number of Manhattan elected officials.

This could end up being Beninati’s second high-profile loss this year. Forum Absolute Capital Partners and its management partner, Mikhail Kurnev, were registered as the sponsor of Bauhouse’s 15-unit condo project at 515 West 29th Street as of late March.

Absolute tapped RAL Companies as the developer to complete the project, where Beninati had filed a condo offering plan in 2014. It wasn’t clear if he still had a financial stake in the project, according to Crain’s.

The new owners are in the midst of a lawsuit with broker Nathaniel Christian, who claims he is owed more than $600,000 in commissions and interest for negotiating the sale of the property. The project’s scheduled completion date is May 2017. [Crain’s] – Rich Bockmann